After claiming that climate denial in the US "hurts" American soldiers deployed overseas, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse says it's a "problem" that America's "uniformed military has been reluctant" to engage in the "fight" against climate change. Whitehouse also says that the Navy is "starting to evaluate their base commanders on how well they communicate the risk of climate change".

'A landmark California bill gaining steam would make it illegal to engage in climate-change dissent, clearing the way for lawsuits against fossil-fuel companies, think-tanks and others that have “deceived or misled the public on the risks of climate change.” The first-of-its-kind legislation — Senate Bill 1161, or the California Climate Science Truth and Accountability Act of 2016 — is scheduled for floor action Thursday after clearing Senate committees in April and May.'

The measure would allow state and local prosecutors to pursue claims against climate-change skepticism as a violation of the state’s Unfair Competition Law [UCL], as well as extend the four-year statute of limitations for such claims retroactively to Jan. 1, 2021.

Stephen Frank, editor of the conservative California Political Review, called the bill a “totalitarian statement by Democrats that the First Amendment is now dead.”

Warmist William M. Connolley: 'What were Shukla, Maibach and all the others thinking when they did all of this from their work email accounts?' - 'Half way through they finally get a clue and swap to private email but good grief its a bit late by then. Idiots.'

'I think the entire idea of using RICO is stupid'

to me, Shukla’s original letter is stupid in mixing science and politics too far: “strong agreement among the scientific community that climate change is real {yes, fine}, it is happening now {fine}, it is human-induced {yeah yeah the IPCC already said all this stuff}, and that we support his proposal [to use RICO] {WTF?}”. No, there is no “strong agreement among the scientific community” supporting Whitehouse’s idea to use RICO. The UCS come out of this looking fairly sane, as they back out of the letter.